By Sean A. Miller
Introduction
What is the mind? The question has been attended to for nearly 2,500 years. Alas, what is the mind? In this manuscript I will utilize principles of language, philosophy, and psychology in order to address the question. My interest lies in examining the mind by how the use of imagination has influenced our use of language. In this manuscript I intend to challenge your beliefs about the mind.
Mankind has accomplished great feats in the 202,008 years we have been Homo Sapiens. Yet, with all of our intellectual power we have not come to understand the mind. The mind seems to be an abstraction; therefore, Homo sapiens have never grasped, touched, or felt the mind. Hence, no empirical evidence has granted its existence.
I will argue the human brain’s development of the frontal lobe containing the prefrontal cortex[1] plays a significant role in the human ability to simulate experience, create a pictographic language, a written language and speech. The prefrontal cortex can represent what the organism experienced by recalling images, and later recalling experience via spoken and written language.
I propose the existence of the mind is a product of language and image-recall as forms of intrapersonal communication. People in the vein of Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes (to only mention three) were engrossed by their ability to intrapersonal communicate. They could not explain the phenomena, and the word ‘mind’ was invented to identify the mysterious faculties of brain.
Imagination/Neuroscience
Around two-million B.C.E. the Homo Hablis possessed a 1.25 pound brain. 1800,000 years later in 200,000 B.C.E. the Homo Sapiens’ brain grew almost double in size, to nearly 3 pounds. With the larger brain, the Homo Sapien also developed a new structure, the frontal lobe (Gilbert, 2004). In the frontal lobe there is the prefrontal cortex, which among many faculties it can simulate experience (Gilbert, 2006). Yet, the prefrontal cortex is not solely responsibly for simulated experience. The frontal lobes are primarily used for reasoning and planning, modulate emotions and personality, voluntary body movements, and convert thoughts into words. Yet, the entire brain works in concert with different areas of the brain.
Harvard College Professor of Psychology, Daniel Gilbert wrote in his book Stumbling on Happiness, the frontal lobes are what allow humans to “experience the future” of “imaginary tomorrows” (Gilbert, 2006, p.16, 17). The behavioral neurologist and neuroscientist, Antonio Damasio wrote in his article, How the Brain Creates the Mind, “…the brain has a natural means to represent the structure and state of the whole living organism….the brain uses structures designed to map both the organism and external objects to create fresh, second-order presentation. This representation indicates that the organism, as mapped in the brain, is involved in interacting with an object, also mapped in the brain” (1999). Following the brains ability to simulate experience, Gilbert and Damasio are suggesting because humans can use the structure, the brain, in which it represents to represent another object; and in creating a second-order representing of another object, the human can image how its organism and the object may interact in the future. This is what Damasio calls the “movie-in-the-brain” metaphor. He writes, “This ‘movie’ is a metaphor for the integrated and unified composite of diverse sensory images—visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory and others—that constitutes the multimedia show we call mind” (1999).
During the 2004 TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) conference, Daniel Gilbert said, “The research my laboratory has been doing, economists and psychologists around the country have been doing have revealed something quite startling to us. Something we call the “impact bias,” which is the tendency for the simulator to work badly—for the simulator makes you believe different outcomes are more different than they really are.” The prefrontal cortex has the ability to imitate or create a simulation of experience infers Homo Sapiens can imitate the process of examining and testing if a thing is true i.e., it simulates the appearance that we are in practical contact with facts and events, but without proof.
Language
There are a many different and contrasting theories as to how humans have a complex capacity for language. At the end of the day, no scientist has been able to prove any cause of the development of language. I am not interested in how the Homo Sapien became to construct the meanings of language and words. My interest lies in how the use of imagination has influenced our use of language.
The prefrontal cortex’s simulation faculty is related to the oldest structures and conventions of language, the cuneiform script. The cuneiform script was a form of pictographs that emerged from Sumer around the 30th century BC. The cuneiform script consisted of about 1,000 unique characters of simple pictorial representations of objects to abstract ideas. With the prefrontal cortex Homo Sapien could remember what they experienced and then simulate it in the form of a picture or pictographic script.
Written human language moved from pictures representing objects and abstract ideas into words that could be spoken represent the same objects and ideas with sound. The Homo Sapien expanded its versatility not only in how it communicates, but what it can communicate about. Jane Goodall spoke elegantly during the 2007 TEDGlobal (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) conference about humans’ ability to use language. She said,
The one thing we have that makes us so different from chimpanzees or
other living creates is the sophisticated spoken language; a language
with which we can tell children about things that are not here. We can
talk about the distant past, plan for the distant future, discuss
ideas with each other so the ideas can grow through the accumulated
wisdom of a group. We can do it by talking to each other; we can do it
through … the written word(Goodall, 2007).
With the use of language humans could not only simulate experience, they would communicate their simulations about the past and the future to others. However, one faculty Jane Goodall does not mention is our sophisticated language being used for intrapersonal communication or self-talk. Intrapersonal communication uses language as a feedback system to send and receive messages as a means of problem-solving. “In Communication: The Social Matrix of Psychiatry, Jurgen Ruesch and Gregory Bateson argue that intrapersonal communication as ‘dialogue is the foundation for all discourse’” (Intrapersonal communication, 2008).
Intrapersonal Communication & Self-Awareness
As Jurgen Ruesch wrote that intrapersonal communication is the foundational dialogue for all discourse, then perhaps the founders of the philosophy of the mind also used this method for their theoretical approach. Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes must have used their own intrapersonal communication to theorize and conceived the mind. How are these three philosophers talking to themselves having anything to do with analyzing “what is the mind’?
Descartes wrote, “I think therefore I am.” Plato stated, “Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.” Conceivably these men, these thinkers, talked to themselves quieting and “invisibly”. They expressed information within themselves by using the language they spoke with, wrote with, and even in with which they thought. Therefore, as the definition alludes, the language of these philosophers (and everyone who uses language) uses words in a structural and conventional way. Language as a convention means it follows a tradition, or transmission of costumes or beliefs—ways of behaving or doing something—that are deployed as a means of achieving something.
Plato and Aristotle were not interested in knowing about the mind, but knowing about the self; yet, these three men didn’t define what the mind is or how the mind may be identified. The conception of the mind derived from the Greek word ‘psykhe,’ in which English derived the Latin word psyche, means "the soul, mind, spirit, breath, life, the invisible animating principle or entity which occupies and directs the physical body (Psyche, 2008). The psyche refers to an invisible animating principle. How is some thing invisible discovered? How did Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes identify and discover the mind, if it is invisible? These three men were not empirical about their thoughts about the mind. They had no means of measuring their hypotheses other than speaking to one another. Their means for investigation was introspection[2]. By thinking, they conceived of the mind.
How did these men ever think the word ‘mind’ or ‘soul’? As I mentioned, the prefrontal cortexes ability to simulate experience only simulates observed facts and events. Therefore, if the mind and soul can not be observed because they are invisible, the prefrontal cortex can not simulate the experience of mind or soul. If the mind and soul can not be simulated because they can not be observed, then what is being experienced which is being called ‘mind’ and ‘soul’? As Damasio wrote, “…the brain has a natural means to represent the structure and state of the whole living organism” (1999). Therefore, Plate, Aristotle and Descartes were experiencing their organism being aware of its self. As Damasio wrote, “The self-aware organism has an incentive to heed the alarm signals provided by the movie-in-the-brain (for instance, pain caused b a particular object) and plan the future avoidance of such an object. Evolution of self rewards awareness, which is clearly a survival advantage” (1999). Although the earlier philosophers were primarily interested in spiritual rationale for experiencing their self, the self-experience is primal and integrated with the body.
As I mentioned before in reference to Plato, Aristotle and Descartes (among others) believed they knew about their thinking. They had no proof about what caused their thinking other than through thinking. Perhaps this conclusion is what provoked Descartes to claim, “I think, therefore I am.” As Daniel Gilbert said, “[this is] something we call the ‘impact bias,’ which is the tendency for the simulator to work badly--for the simulator makes you believe different outcomes are more different than they really are.” ”(2004). Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes didn’t know their simulators worked badly. And often times neither does anyone else. Therefore, Descartes claim “I think, therefore I am” is an unclear explanation of self-awareness. “I am” is constant whether thought is present. What Descartes may literally means “I think, therefore I think I am.” Descartes claim is an objective statement about his subjectivity. Yet, when one endeavors to objectify their subjectivity via believing one can simulate the simulator, self-awareness is not achieved through simulating the simulator or thinking about thinking.
Self-awareness is experienced through thinking and/or simulating; therefore self-awareness is not an activity to be experienced, it is the human experience of the self.
Conclusion
Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes (among many others) developed their theories of mind based on the belief their intrapersonal communication was a reliable source proof about…anything. However, without empirical evidence that grants the existence of mind, theories of the mind contain an “impact bias.”
I propose the existence of the mind is a product of language and image-recall as forms of intrapersonal communication. People in the vein of Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes (to only mention three) could not explain the phenomena of their organism’s self-awareness, and the words ‘mind’ and ‘soul’ were invented to identify the mysterious faculties of brain that represents itself and other objects.
I put forward, the ‘mind’ is a product of imagination plus a form of linguistics. Our personal understanding about the mind is dependent upon our pattern or convention of beliefs in which we choose to experience our subjective existence of thinking. Therefore, ‘mind’ exists when one desires to simulate a system of pictographic or linguistic thought onto their direct sense-experience. ‘Mind’ does not exist when one is merely aware of their senses, without simulating a system of pictographic or linguistic thought onto their direct sense-experience. The beliefs we create from our experience via thought are simulations, imposing meaning onto an existence, void of inherent meaning. Imagination and linguistics impose meaning on to experience, creating the necessity for ‘mind’; without imagination and linguistics the ‘mind’ will not exist.
References:
Damasio, Antnio R. (1999) How the Brain Creates the Mind. Scientific America,
Inc. Issue Decemeber, 1999 p.4-9
Gilbert, Daniel. (2004) Why are we happy? Why aren't we happy? Proceedings from TED ’04: Technology, Entertainment, and Design, Money and Desire. New York, New York: U.S.A.
Gilbert, D. (2006). Stumbling on happiness. New York: Random House, Inc.
Goodall, Jane (2002). What separates us from the apes? Proceedings from TEDGlobal ’02: Technology, Entertainment, and Design, Africa: The Next Chapter: Learning from Nature. Arusha, Tanzania: Africa.
Intrapersonal communication. (2008, October 27). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 23:46, November 29, 2008, from (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Intrapersonal_communication&oldid=248074640)
Introspection. (n.d.) In Compact Oxford English Dictionary of Current English. Retrieved December 13, 2008. from http://www.askoxford.com
Pyche. (n.d.) In Online Etymology Online. Retrieved November 14, 2003.
from http://www.etymonline.com
[1] c. 200,000 BCE (Gilbert, 2004).
[2] “ noun the examination of one’s own thoughts or feelings” (Introspection, 2008).
Introduction
What is the mind? The question has been attended to for nearly 2,500 years. Alas, what is the mind? In this manuscript I will utilize principles of language, philosophy, and psychology in order to address the question. My interest lies in examining the mind by how the use of imagination has influenced our use of language. In this manuscript I intend to challenge your beliefs about the mind.
Mankind has accomplished great feats in the 202,008 years we have been Homo Sapiens. Yet, with all of our intellectual power we have not come to understand the mind. The mind seems to be an abstraction; therefore, Homo sapiens have never grasped, touched, or felt the mind. Hence, no empirical evidence has granted its existence.
I will argue the human brain’s development of the frontal lobe containing the prefrontal cortex[1] plays a significant role in the human ability to simulate experience, create a pictographic language, a written language and speech. The prefrontal cortex can represent what the organism experienced by recalling images, and later recalling experience via spoken and written language.
I propose the existence of the mind is a product of language and image-recall as forms of intrapersonal communication. People in the vein of Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes (to only mention three) were engrossed by their ability to intrapersonal communicate. They could not explain the phenomena, and the word ‘mind’ was invented to identify the mysterious faculties of brain.
Imagination/Neuroscience
Around two-million B.C.E. the Homo Hablis possessed a 1.25 pound brain. 1800,000 years later in 200,000 B.C.E. the Homo Sapiens’ brain grew almost double in size, to nearly 3 pounds. With the larger brain, the Homo Sapien also developed a new structure, the frontal lobe (Gilbert, 2004). In the frontal lobe there is the prefrontal cortex, which among many faculties it can simulate experience (Gilbert, 2006). Yet, the prefrontal cortex is not solely responsibly for simulated experience. The frontal lobes are primarily used for reasoning and planning, modulate emotions and personality, voluntary body movements, and convert thoughts into words. Yet, the entire brain works in concert with different areas of the brain.
Harvard College Professor of Psychology, Daniel Gilbert wrote in his book Stumbling on Happiness, the frontal lobes are what allow humans to “experience the future” of “imaginary tomorrows” (Gilbert, 2006, p.16, 17). The behavioral neurologist and neuroscientist, Antonio Damasio wrote in his article, How the Brain Creates the Mind, “…the brain has a natural means to represent the structure and state of the whole living organism….the brain uses structures designed to map both the organism and external objects to create fresh, second-order presentation. This representation indicates that the organism, as mapped in the brain, is involved in interacting with an object, also mapped in the brain” (1999). Following the brains ability to simulate experience, Gilbert and Damasio are suggesting because humans can use the structure, the brain, in which it represents to represent another object; and in creating a second-order representing of another object, the human can image how its organism and the object may interact in the future. This is what Damasio calls the “movie-in-the-brain” metaphor. He writes, “This ‘movie’ is a metaphor for the integrated and unified composite of diverse sensory images—visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory and others—that constitutes the multimedia show we call mind” (1999).
During the 2004 TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) conference, Daniel Gilbert said, “The research my laboratory has been doing, economists and psychologists around the country have been doing have revealed something quite startling to us. Something we call the “impact bias,” which is the tendency for the simulator to work badly—for the simulator makes you believe different outcomes are more different than they really are.” The prefrontal cortex has the ability to imitate or create a simulation of experience infers Homo Sapiens can imitate the process of examining and testing if a thing is true i.e., it simulates the appearance that we are in practical contact with facts and events, but without proof.
Language
There are a many different and contrasting theories as to how humans have a complex capacity for language. At the end of the day, no scientist has been able to prove any cause of the development of language. I am not interested in how the Homo Sapien became to construct the meanings of language and words. My interest lies in how the use of imagination has influenced our use of language.
The prefrontal cortex’s simulation faculty is related to the oldest structures and conventions of language, the cuneiform script. The cuneiform script was a form of pictographs that emerged from Sumer around the 30th century BC. The cuneiform script consisted of about 1,000 unique characters of simple pictorial representations of objects to abstract ideas. With the prefrontal cortex Homo Sapien could remember what they experienced and then simulate it in the form of a picture or pictographic script.
Written human language moved from pictures representing objects and abstract ideas into words that could be spoken represent the same objects and ideas with sound. The Homo Sapien expanded its versatility not only in how it communicates, but what it can communicate about. Jane Goodall spoke elegantly during the 2007 TEDGlobal (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) conference about humans’ ability to use language. She said,
The one thing we have that makes us so different from chimpanzees or
other living creates is the sophisticated spoken language; a language
with which we can tell children about things that are not here. We can
talk about the distant past, plan for the distant future, discuss
ideas with each other so the ideas can grow through the accumulated
wisdom of a group. We can do it by talking to each other; we can do it
through … the written word(Goodall, 2007).
With the use of language humans could not only simulate experience, they would communicate their simulations about the past and the future to others. However, one faculty Jane Goodall does not mention is our sophisticated language being used for intrapersonal communication or self-talk. Intrapersonal communication uses language as a feedback system to send and receive messages as a means of problem-solving. “In Communication: The Social Matrix of Psychiatry, Jurgen Ruesch and Gregory Bateson argue that intrapersonal communication as ‘dialogue is the foundation for all discourse’” (Intrapersonal communication, 2008).
Intrapersonal Communication & Self-Awareness
As Jurgen Ruesch wrote that intrapersonal communication is the foundational dialogue for all discourse, then perhaps the founders of the philosophy of the mind also used this method for their theoretical approach. Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes must have used their own intrapersonal communication to theorize and conceived the mind. How are these three philosophers talking to themselves having anything to do with analyzing “what is the mind’?
Descartes wrote, “I think therefore I am.” Plato stated, “Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.” Conceivably these men, these thinkers, talked to themselves quieting and “invisibly”. They expressed information within themselves by using the language they spoke with, wrote with, and even in with which they thought. Therefore, as the definition alludes, the language of these philosophers (and everyone who uses language) uses words in a structural and conventional way. Language as a convention means it follows a tradition, or transmission of costumes or beliefs—ways of behaving or doing something—that are deployed as a means of achieving something.
Plato and Aristotle were not interested in knowing about the mind, but knowing about the self; yet, these three men didn’t define what the mind is or how the mind may be identified. The conception of the mind derived from the Greek word ‘psykhe,’ in which English derived the Latin word psyche, means "the soul, mind, spirit, breath, life, the invisible animating principle or entity which occupies and directs the physical body (Psyche, 2008). The psyche refers to an invisible animating principle. How is some thing invisible discovered? How did Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes identify and discover the mind, if it is invisible? These three men were not empirical about their thoughts about the mind. They had no means of measuring their hypotheses other than speaking to one another. Their means for investigation was introspection[2]. By thinking, they conceived of the mind.
How did these men ever think the word ‘mind’ or ‘soul’? As I mentioned, the prefrontal cortexes ability to simulate experience only simulates observed facts and events. Therefore, if the mind and soul can not be observed because they are invisible, the prefrontal cortex can not simulate the experience of mind or soul. If the mind and soul can not be simulated because they can not be observed, then what is being experienced which is being called ‘mind’ and ‘soul’? As Damasio wrote, “…the brain has a natural means to represent the structure and state of the whole living organism” (1999). Therefore, Plate, Aristotle and Descartes were experiencing their organism being aware of its self. As Damasio wrote, “The self-aware organism has an incentive to heed the alarm signals provided by the movie-in-the-brain (for instance, pain caused b a particular object) and plan the future avoidance of such an object. Evolution of self rewards awareness, which is clearly a survival advantage” (1999). Although the earlier philosophers were primarily interested in spiritual rationale for experiencing their self, the self-experience is primal and integrated with the body.
As I mentioned before in reference to Plato, Aristotle and Descartes (among others) believed they knew about their thinking. They had no proof about what caused their thinking other than through thinking. Perhaps this conclusion is what provoked Descartes to claim, “I think, therefore I am.” As Daniel Gilbert said, “[this is] something we call the ‘impact bias,’ which is the tendency for the simulator to work badly--for the simulator makes you believe different outcomes are more different than they really are.” ”(2004). Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes didn’t know their simulators worked badly. And often times neither does anyone else. Therefore, Descartes claim “I think, therefore I am” is an unclear explanation of self-awareness. “I am” is constant whether thought is present. What Descartes may literally means “I think, therefore I think I am.” Descartes claim is an objective statement about his subjectivity. Yet, when one endeavors to objectify their subjectivity via believing one can simulate the simulator, self-awareness is not achieved through simulating the simulator or thinking about thinking.
Self-awareness is experienced through thinking and/or simulating; therefore self-awareness is not an activity to be experienced, it is the human experience of the self.
Conclusion
Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes (among many others) developed their theories of mind based on the belief their intrapersonal communication was a reliable source proof about…anything. However, without empirical evidence that grants the existence of mind, theories of the mind contain an “impact bias.”
I propose the existence of the mind is a product of language and image-recall as forms of intrapersonal communication. People in the vein of Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes (to only mention three) could not explain the phenomena of their organism’s self-awareness, and the words ‘mind’ and ‘soul’ were invented to identify the mysterious faculties of brain that represents itself and other objects.
I put forward, the ‘mind’ is a product of imagination plus a form of linguistics. Our personal understanding about the mind is dependent upon our pattern or convention of beliefs in which we choose to experience our subjective existence of thinking. Therefore, ‘mind’ exists when one desires to simulate a system of pictographic or linguistic thought onto their direct sense-experience. ‘Mind’ does not exist when one is merely aware of their senses, without simulating a system of pictographic or linguistic thought onto their direct sense-experience. The beliefs we create from our experience via thought are simulations, imposing meaning onto an existence, void of inherent meaning. Imagination and linguistics impose meaning on to experience, creating the necessity for ‘mind’; without imagination and linguistics the ‘mind’ will not exist.
References:
Damasio, Antnio R. (1999) How the Brain Creates the Mind. Scientific America,
Inc. Issue Decemeber, 1999 p.4-9
Gilbert, Daniel. (2004) Why are we happy? Why aren't we happy? Proceedings from TED ’04: Technology, Entertainment, and Design, Money and Desire. New York, New York: U.S.A.
Gilbert, D. (2006). Stumbling on happiness. New York: Random House, Inc.
Goodall, Jane (2002). What separates us from the apes? Proceedings from TEDGlobal ’02: Technology, Entertainment, and Design, Africa: The Next Chapter: Learning from Nature. Arusha, Tanzania: Africa.
Intrapersonal communication. (2008, October 27). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 23:46, November 29, 2008, from (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Intrapersonal_communication&oldid=248074640)
Introspection. (n.d.) In Compact Oxford English Dictionary of Current English. Retrieved December 13, 2008. from http://www.askoxford.com
Pyche. (n.d.) In Online Etymology Online. Retrieved November 14, 2003.
from http://www.etymonline.com
[1] c. 200,000 BCE (Gilbert, 2004).
[2] “ noun the examination of one’s own thoughts or feelings” (Introspection, 2008).
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